I keep circling back to the financial markets because they are the chief signaling agent for most people. As long as the markets are doing okay, people’s attention wanders away from our predicaments and towards believing in the dominant "all is fine" narrative.

But, with the crystal-clear connection we see between asset prices and central bank money printing, prices in today's “markets” are really a creation of monetary policy. As a result, the signals the markets send us increasingly have no bearing on actual reality.

Here’s a good example: McDonalds' stock is hitting new high after new high. This is a function of both the ever-rising markets but also of the company's own internal accounting hocus-pocus.